Melvins playing Lysol/Eggnog at Slims SF
Kylesa at Emo¹s in AustinLudicra at The Jackalope in Austin
Big Business w/ Dale at Vice's thing at SXSW
Turbonegro at the Vice show
Sabbath with Dio in San Jose
Unleashed at Metro in Oakland

10. Avocado - It's a fruit alright... go back to school, numnuts.
9. Banana - The atheist's nightmare, as shown by Kirk Cameron. It's got that "I'm not a fruit" texture
8. Mandarin Orange - The new orange is another orange.
7. Zucchini - Grows long and hard... good for sexual metaphors, not so good in actual meals.
6. Pumpkin - Now taxed as a decoration!
5. Tomato - Ronald Reagan and the Supreme Court ruled it's a vegetable, making the tomato the number one red fruit with contrarian commie botanists everywhere.
4. Lime - Makes any shitty Mexican beer appear more expensive.
3. Artichoke - How to shovel a grip of mayonnaise into one's mouth and still appear to be eating healthy.
2. Cranberries - Gotta clear that urinary tract of any "foreign substances" the bosses don't want to detect.
1. Senator Larry Craig - His wide stance in a toilet stall makes him number one fruit of the year.

1) Patty Smith singing "Children of the Revolution" in the middle of Central Park on marc Bolan's 60th birthday

2) Seeing Stevie Wonder in Baltimore on a Sunday evening on the harbor. He was one of the best performers Ive ever seen. Slayed over a thousand people and made them feel as if they were in his living room. Then having lunch at John Waters' house the next day and gossiping and smoking in the garden.

3) "Red 7" venue in Austin, TX at the Pansy Division/Avengers show. walls were sweating. Bibles were being torn to shred in the audience and onstage. Cans of beer being tossed around. Just where I needed to be.

4) Chopping down some trees in the Adirondack mountains and bringing the wood back to Brooklyn. Spending a few days of quiet with some dudes and doing manly stuff in nature. WEIRD!!!!!!!!!

5) Eating fried chicken in a bar and hanging out with some Hassidic Jews who smoke and drink and play pool like total barflys.

6) Seeing Turbonegro at the "NOKIA" theater in Times square where you can charge your phone in the lobby and hang in the clilllaxxxx lounge and stuff like that. I can never go to a House of Blues or NOKIA Theater or any of that stuff. Please stop playing at these venues, please!!!! Turbonegro still totally slayed though...

7) Building a shop out of wood and researching seasonal produce for months and finally opening a little produce shop. I'm a grocer now. Who knew? (www.urbanrusticnyc.com)

8) Stealing a car and driving it all weekend. Realizing it was a bad idea and continuing to do it against better judgement.

2. Podcasts! A.T., The World Affairs Council of N. California, The Commonwealth Club, The Onion, Harry Shearer's Le Show, This American Life, and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now help keep my iPod full.

3. San Francisco Public Library.
They actually have the left-wing books reviewed in magazines like The Nation, so I don't have to buy them. (Quote, I forget from who: "We now inhabit an era of such extreme corporate control and government censorship of the media that books have become the new journalism and documentaries have become the modern news programs.")

4. CSA
CSA stands for community supported agriculture. It means paying a flat fee each week for a box of organic produce from a nearby farm. I get mine from Eatwell Farm (between Davis and Dixon). Yum! (www.eatwell.com)

6. Driving cross-country by myself from New York to San Francisco in 5 days. Peaceful! (I learned a lot on the trip--did you know Arby's serves deep fried cheesecake in "raspberry" dipping sauce? Not that I ate it...)

1. Releasing our first country punk rock opera Hee Haw Hell
2. Watching New Orleans become a operational city again
3. Seeing Jerry Lee Lewis at Jazzfest
4. Real absinthe is legal again in New Orleans
5. Dash pal and counterculture yoga freek Steve Poltz had a song on a Jeep commercial
6. Our cowbell girl in Key West took her shirt off
7. People still give us lots of pot
8. Katrina focused attention on corrupt La. politicians and as a result a shitload of them are now in jail
9. Mardi Gras "mi casa es su casa"
10. 2007 was heaven and 2008 will be great.

10 - Going 5 kicker games undefeated against germans in Aachen.
9 - Berlin, Prague, Brrno, Copenhagen, Lyon, and Tours on the last Europe tour.
8 - Coen Brothers removing heads from asses and releasing No Country For Old Men.
7 - New album "Curses" by Future of the Left.
6 - All these years and Nomeansno is still awesome.
5 - George Lucas did not put out another shitty Star Wars movie.
4 - Finally recording a concept album (to be released...)
3 - Getting a d20 tattooed on my elbow.
2 - Getting photographed next to Tom Morello at SxSW flaunting said d20 tattoo.
1 - Eggnog came out one month early!

11/23/07: Akimbo "Navigating the Bronze" Contest!
It's been a long, long, loooong while since we had a contest. Are you guys ready for a new one?

"Dude, I totally navigated the bronze last night!"

What does that sentence mean to you? This elusive phrase has not been explicitly defined by Akimbo, the band who created this mysterious album title. Many theories have been informally offered, none to our satisfaction. However, we want to make "Navigating the Bronze" as ubiquitous as "Ghostriding the Whip" or "Oh no you dih-ent!" in the youth lexicon.

We leave it up to you, the creative AT fan, to fill in semiotic gap left wide by our well-coiffed Seattle trio. Stretch those vocab muscles and enter to win a signed vinyl copies of said album Navigating the Bronze. We have two LPs, both signed and embellished by all three members of Akimbo.

Rules:

1. Define the phrase "Navigating the Bronze"
2. Use it in a sentence that reflects this meaning
3. Send your entry by DECEMBER 17, 2007 with your contact information (name, email, mailing address) to:

4. Akimbo will judge the entries. Two winners will receive signed Navigating the Bronze LPs, and we will publish the winners and honorable mentions on the Alternative Tentacles site.

Rest assured, we won't use the e-mail/postal address provided other than to notify winners and mail them their prizes.

11/22/07: Mailorder closed until Monday 11/26
We're closed until Monday November 26th because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Some orders will be mailed tomorrow (Friday November 22nd) but all currently printed orders will be mailed by Monday afternoon.

Some Thanksgiving-related reading for you...From the journal Critique of Anthropology comes this paragraph from Janet Suskind, Rutgers University:"Thanksgiving was 'invented' in its present form at the end of the 19th century. Through the consummation of a sacred meal, a diverse collection of immigrants become the descendants of the Pilgrims. In every household that considers itself Amencan or desires to become American, Thanksgiving brings family members back home, ritually strengthening attenuated ties of kinship and investing the set of meanings incorporated in being an Amencan with the emotional intensity and significance of family. This article traces the develop ment and analyzes the meanings of this ritual and its symbols."

Reactionary right-wing lunatic magazine The Free Republic has a slightly different, pro-free market take in this article, originally printed in 1985.

11/13/07: Plastic People of the Universe in the NY Times

The New York Times published a great article on The Plastic People of the Universe as well as Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'n' Roll, about Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. Jello has been a fan of the Plastics and in the 1980s, signed Life After Life featuring members of the Plastic People of the Universe to Alternative Tentacles.

You can find a great selection of Plastics releases we carry in our mailorder here. Also check out Life After Life's full length Just Trip (Virus 192).

11/13/07: Public hearing for renaming of Dirk Dirksen Alley
There will be a public hearing at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday, November 15 at 10am regarding the renaming of Rowland Street at 443 Broadway (original location of Mabuhay Gardens) to Dirk Dirksen Alley.

SF City Hall is located at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, directions and map are here. The hearing will take place in Room 263.

On September 20, Gary King Jr was tasered, then shot in the back by Oakland police officer Patrick Gonzales. Every Thursday (until further notice) between 3-5pm at Frank Ogawa Plaza, there will be weekly gatherings organized by King's family to protest police brutality and to demand justice for Gary King Jr. For more info, please visit SF Bay Area Indy Media website.

10/22/07: R.I.P. Lance Hahn

Lance Hahn of J Church and Cringer passed away yesterday, October 21, due to complications from kidney disease. Before he moved to Austin, TX, Lance was an integral part of the Bay Area punk community. We are very saddened by this news and offer our deepest condolences to Lance's family and friends.

We all know that Zolar X is the Greatest Zolarian Band, but are they the Next Great American Band? Here's what Jello Biafra has to say about that:

Yo! Hey, Everyone.

We're not normally into plugging network TV, especially for a Fox show from the same culture-poisoners as American Idol. But wait--this Friday, October 19 (8pm, 7pm Central), on the premiere of The Next Great American Band, their "weirdest bands ever" section features none other than our own Zolar X!

Tune in! Tell your Friends! Gather a group of people who have no idea what they're about to be subjected to. Like seeing Wesley Willis or GWAR for the first time, half the fun is watching the reactions on other people's faces.

Or you can judge for yourself by checking out Zolar X's latest album of all-new material X Marks the Spot (Virus 379) or their anthology Timeless (Virus 319)...or both!

"Hardcore Punk Legend Mikey Offender Dead At 46
Mikey "Offender" Donaldson passed away in his sleep on September 22 in Barcelona Spain where he had recently relocated from Amsterdam. The cause is unknown at the moment. He was 46. He is survived by his brother Joe Donaldson, sister Marie Donaldson Ward, and sister Sumiko Hakari , all of Killeen, Texas. Mikey was the bass player for Austin, Texas punk band THE OFFENDERS from 1978-86. He also recorded bass tracks on MDC's groundbreaker Millions Of Dead Cops and DRI's Dealing With It. Mikey also performed regularly with MDC in the early 1980s. He moved to San Francisco in 1986 and went on to play and record with Gary Floyd (DICKS) and Lynn Perko (IMPERIAL TEEN) in SISTER DOUBLE HAPPINESS. After leaving the music scene for ten years or so, Mikey returned to Austin and reunited with the original Offenders line-up for a gig at Emos in March 2002. In 2003 MDC recruited Mikey and the original line-up, recorded a new album, and have been touring all over the world ever since. Mikey is universally regarded as one of the most innovative and inimitable masters of the bass guitar. He played his Rickenbacker like it was a out-sized rhythm guitar. Taking cues from Jack Bruce (CREAM) and Lemmy Kilmister (MOTÖRHEAD), Mikey pioneered an agressive speed-picking style and liberal employment of bass chords that few have been able to emulate in the past 20 years. He will be sorely missed, certainly in Austin and his hometown of Killeen, but also across the globe. A memorial celebration in Austin is pending and the date will be announced soon. "

09/27/07: New videos up the wazoo!

Some of our bands are getting on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, gracing us with the miracle of embedded videos.
We're putting two videos below. First is Zolar X
with their song "Oveon Triopp"/"Retro Rockets" from their brand new album
X Marks the Spot (Virus 379). Second is a
video from The Evaporators for a new song called "Gassy Jack"
from their upcoming album on Mint Records titled Gassy Jack and Other Tales. Enjoy!

09/24/07: Buy Local in Berkeley and world-wide!
In the spirit of the expanding "Buy Local" movement, locals can celebrate the new Buy Local Berkeley campaign! Meet and mingle with Berkeley merchants and community partners who support independently and locally-owned businesses- it's all Thursday, September 27 from 4-7 at Jupiter (2181 Shattuck Ave) in downtown Berkeley.